Therapy Quotes

“I expect nothing from Psychoanalysis or therapy, whose rudimentary conclusions became clear to me a long time ago--- a domineering mother, a father whose submissiveness is shattered by a murderous gesture... To state "it's a childhood trauma" or "that day the idols were knocked off their pedestal" does nothing to explain a scene which could only be conveyed by the expression that came to me at the time: to breathe disaster. Here abstract speech fails to reach me.”
― Annie Ernaux, Shame

“There will come a time when being raw will be the norm. Don’t be embarrassed for being sensitive and vulnerable.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“I’m not going to be specific, but I had some early sexual experiences that, as I got older, were really, really difficult to deal with. It wasn’t to do with anything that happened in my family or at home, it was these… different things that happened. So my mental health had come through the negotiation of sex as a teenager and a young man, and romantic relationships.”
― Matty Healy

“The healthy man does not torture others—generally, it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”
― C.G. Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious

“In reality everything depends on the man and little on the method”
― C.G. Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life

“I hit rock bottom and found something solid there.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“When . . . the therapist registers an unexpected shift of mood in herself when she is with a patient, she begins a private inner dialogue with herself as to what it might mean. First she checks herself out, as though she is an object of study. What does the patient evoke in her? Why did she feel uptight just then? Why did she feel sad when the patient was making a light remark? Did the patient hit a particularly personal nerve? Such emotional states, which the therapist notices in herself, are called the counter-transference. As she cordons off the feelings and reflects on them, their dissonance alerts her: something difficult needs understanding. Her body, her emotional state, become a stethoscope-like instrument for hearing what might be askew.”
― Susie Orbach, Bodies

“I’ve got too much history of thinking about how you present yourself. I think that I get known for being a motormouth, but when introspection is provoked, I can’t help but make it a bit of therapy.”
― Matty Healy

“What we need is a profound rethinking of the nature of suffering itself, and what it is trying to highlight and ask us to change. We need to repoliticise emotional discontent in the minds of teachers, parents and policy-makers, rather than continue reducing it to dysfunctions that allegedly reside within the self. We need to acknowledge that suffering also reflects family/socio/political dynamics we would do well to better acknowledge and address.”
― James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

“Most of my friends have been in therapy at one time or another and you know what puzzles me about it? It's the idea that there's any kind of tidy answer to things. Life doesn't seem to me like that--it's a mess. But most people--or at least most people back home--go at it like they were after the secret of the universe. Just find the right formula and you'll get happy. You'll hit on the answer like you might hit on the right colour-scheme for the living-room and the sun will come out and shine for ever after. Coming to terms with life, that's what it's called. But personally I don't see how you come to terms with something that's basically fouled-up in a lot of ways. And I don't call that pessimism, I call it common sense. You know what I think? I think it's a misplaced faith in science. This is a scientific age and by heavens it ought to come up with a scientific answer to everything. Even how to get through life without trouble.”
― Penelope Lively, Perfect Happiness

“A CSJ-driven approach to psychotherapy would exacerbate and worsen problems for individuals seeking psychotherapy. A CSJ-driven approach teaches clients to see their emotional experiences as harmful and blame their emotional experiences on oppression. Clients would learn to be constantly focused on racism, sexism, homophobia, and oppression as the cause of their problems.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice

“No matter what therapeutic approach is provided, if the relationship between therapist and client is not established or is perceived by the client as problematic, then it is unlikely that the therapy will be successful.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice

“Both the client and therapist are not primarily seen as human persons in relation to each other and the socio-cultural world around them. Instead, they are viewed as defined by their intersecting group identities and, importantly, the differences and inequalities these identities create. Dynamics of oppression are at the heart of the CSJ-driven therapy relationship.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice

“A presence-based relationship with core characteristics like openness and receptivity where the therapist strives for an attitude of un-knowing cannot manifest where both client and therapist are pre-determined in their identities and their relationship is essentially seen as oppressive from the outset.”
― Dr Val Thomas, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Antitherapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice

“You are never too broken to be fixed,
You are never too fixed to be broken.
Life is a dance between hurt and heal,
sometimes psycho, sometimes surreal,
To wake up to life you gotta be shaken.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sapionova: 200 Limericks for Students

“You are never too broken to be fixed,
You are never too fixed to be broken.
Life is a dance between hurt and heal,
Sometimes psycho, sometimes surreal.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sapionova: 200 Limericks for Students

“If I write about a good experience, or a beautiful place, I feel uplifted. If I write about taking ecstasy in a nightclub, I experience the sensations of the drug. If I write about a traumatic experience, I relive it, and it serves as therapy. In a similar way, hypnotherapists and psychologists have their patients relive their past experiences, or trauma, as part of their healing process.”
― Jack Freestone

“The past seems like a smashed windscreen after a car crash. All crazy opaque pieces barely held together by the laminate.”
― Angel Capelli, Losing our Marbles?

“Look for safe people to whom you show your vulnerability and rawness. Not everyone deserves that privilege.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“It is possible that some may use your vulnerability and rawness against you. Don't worry much. Just place plan B into motion to combat their actions.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Remember how raw you were with your mother when you were a toddler? Now, remember the reaction that you received. Was it good, was it bad? Have you made any actions to resolve those feelings? Reflect.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“What feelings are coming up for you?
I can't think of anything to say. Should I literally do what the question asks, stick two fingers down my throat and vomit up the strange, dark monster that has made its home inside of me? We could interrogate this creature instead.”
― Julie Mayhew, Red Ink

“Insanın kendini yaşam nehrine bırakması ve sorunun akıp gitmesine izin vermesi gerekir.”
― Irvin Yalom

“All the world's an asylum,
All the people are lunatics.
Some are but loonies of love,
Some loonies run by prejudice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“All the world's an asylum,
All the people are lunatics.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“He thought back to what his therapist had taught him. Uncover your thoughts first, feelings next.”
― Melanie Summers, A Hollywood Ending

“For example, when you’re co-dependent on your partner you resent them, but when you leave your partner, you feel anxious and bereft.”
― Baek Sehee, I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki: Further Conversations with My Psychiatrist

“Tim Kasser: ‘The heyday of humanistic psychology was in the 1960s and 1970s, when Keynes dominated. But since the rise of neo-liberalism from the 1980s, we’ve seen an influx of cognitive behavioural approaches and psychiatric drugs – technologies that put the cause of the problem right between your ears. The therapies our governments now want all focus on internal not external reform. They don’t see suffering as a call to change external circumstances for the good of our development.”
― James Davies, Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis

“We may want others' forgiveness, but that comes from a place of self-gratification; we are asking forgiveness of others to avoid the harder wotk of forgiving ourselves.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“Sometimes I feel dead”, I told her, “and I hate everybody. Does that count?” “Oh, that counts. That certainly counts.”
― Otessa Moshfegh